biological tissues because of its far stronger bonds, but it
is not itself biological. What is more, osteocytes are not
collagen. They are delicate cells with no cross-linking in
their structure. For that matter, neither is DNA, with no
cross-linking whatsoever. Nevertheless, Rana proceeds
to describe seven ‘durable’ chemical biological structures
as potential reasons for the ongoing presence of dinosaur
tissues in bone graveyards after millions of years of
exposure in their shallow graves.

I note that little discussion is made here of the highly
destructive actions of water molecules and oxidants (like
those produced by the action of free iron) on once-living
biological tissue systems. What is more, none of the seven
‘durable’ chemical structures have anything to do with
the membranes of cells, like the thousands of osteocyte
cells that I have recovered from dinosaur remains. The
phospholipid bilayer membrane of every osteocyte cell is
extremely vulnerable to the action of water and oxidants,
which bring about massive decay.
10

What is curious, however, is that Rana goes into some
detail describing the durability of the heme molecule,
and concludes: “the porphyrin ring [which locks the
iron molecule tightly to its centre] is an extremely stable
compound, which helps explain its presence in fossilized
dinosaur bones [emphasis added]” (p. 61). Rana is
actually making a very good argument here contradicting
Dr Schweitzer’s hypothesis that ‘free’ iron molecules
work through Fenton chemistry reactions to produce
hydroxyls and peroxyls (oxidants) which somehow ‘fix’
the soft tissues (like formaldehyde). If the heme molecule
is ‘extremely stable’, then how is the iron liberated?
Additionally, how do these liberated iron molecules ‘fix’
tissues with the dangerous hydroxyl oxidants before they
can destroy the very tissues they are ‘fixing’? None of this
is explained by Schweitzer et al.
11 or Rana. 12

On page 62, Rana confesses that he only has half
an explanation at this point, as “durability alone is not
sufficient to account for the survival of soft tissues in fossil
remains for upwards of hundreds of millions of years”. He
then qualifies the importance of what he is about to tell us:
“Many other conditions must also be met simultaneously.”
None of the nine stabilizing conditions he outlines (that
must be met) relate to the Triceratops horn we recovered.

Necessary stabilizing conditions

Let us consider these nine ‘stabilizing conditions’:

1. “During fossilization [I think he means per-mineralization], mineral-rich water infuses the remains
… the original minerals in the bone (and other parts)
are replaced with minerals from the environment” (p.

62). In the case of the Triceratops horn, only the vesselsthat were open to the environment (and mineral-richwater) were hardened into stone. That is why they didnot respond to decalcification. The bone, however, is stillbone. One can see this clearly in figures 14 and 15 of mypaper.
13 It responded to the same decalcification protocolthat every pathology laboratory in the country employsto examine soft tissues in human bone. It is still bone.Therefore #1 is invalidated.

2. “Burial conditions also appear to be important …
presumably water more readily drains away from animal
remains … creating drier conditions, removing microbes
and environmental enzymes” (p. 62). In the case of
the horn, my paper stated clearly: “the horn was not
desiccated when recovered and actually had a muddy
matrix deeply embedded within it” (p. 606). There were
“drier conditions” associated with the deposit, but it was
not so in the horn. We described in several places in our
paper that the horn was wet; therefore, it would have
certainly been perfused with bacteria, microbes and
environmental enzymes. Therefore #2 is invalidated.

3. For the third qualification, Rana discusses “Dry,
anhydrous conditions”, which we have just dealt with
above, but here he seems to now argue for the need for
wet samples! “Ironically, in some instances, a limited
amount of water may actually help preserve biomolecules
such as collagen” (p. 63). My question becomes, which
is it? Wet or dry? His answer is apparently, both!

4. For this condition, Rana identifies oxygen as a “highly
reactive, chemically destructive material that readily
destroys organics” (p. 64), and therefore soft tissues in
dinosaur remains must be segregated from oxygen in
order to remain preserved. In several places in my Acta
Histochemica paper,
7 including the figures, we noted that
plant roots were abundant (even underlying some of the
soft brown sheets) and that they probably contributed
to the fracturing of the horn. Therefore, oxygen would
have been present into the far reaches of the fractured
bone. Yet large sheets of fibrillar bone, and exquisitely
preserved osteocytes were present. Therefore #4 is
invalidated.

5. For the fifth stabilizing condition, Rana emphasizes that
soft tissue remains must be kept away from environmental
influences, such as digestive enzymes or other chemicals
that would otherwise destroy soft tissues. The standard
and oft-repeated argument is that the soft tissues are
protected by encapsulating hard bone, thus destructive
enzymes cannot get to them. Programmed cell death and
simple entropy alone would cause unfed, unattended cells
to rot on their own, whether they were embedded in bone
mineral or not. Therefore, they must have been preserved
quickly to yield the stunningly preserved cells that we
observe.

Hence, for the ‘iron preservation’ theory to work and
work quickly to prevent decay, cells and tissues had to